We tend to define ‘Endurance’ in terms of physical strength. We believe ‘overcoming the odds’ is a reference to personal strength. The odds that we overcome are measured by our ability to gain some status or property in this life.

What made the testimony of the man ‘Job’ so notable was not the return of his riches; but, the understanding that in the scope of this reality, only GOD was worthy. The daybreak in the awareness of his own insignificance; in the scheme of all GOD had done, was doing, and would do, became the catalyst to Job’s success.

There was always the chance that Job would bury his children and end his life on his sick bed. A dutiful wife waiting on him hand and foot. Resolved to what they both had come to believe, was his fate. Perhaps committed to a Kevorkian ending. “Curse GOD and die,” she had implored Job. Because that’s how we humans think. We reason when we have done the best we can, then there is nothing more that can be done.

We have a myriad of labels for this resolve. Today, a popular label is “quality of life.” The inference that we even know what “quality of life’ means; is another way of saying, “just curse GOD and die. Or even more fatally, “I did it my way!”

We hold insistently to the mirage of our own strength until we have developed our own ‘speaks’ for choosing death over life. Perhaps an earned default for a society that dares decide when is life and what is life.

We’re not suicidal, fit throwing adolescent creatures. Oh no! We are Masters of all we view. Creator of all we own. Giants among creatures of a temporal existence!

What we are, is vain.

By our conclusions, we can remain noble in our deference to defeat. Some of us go to the corner and hold up a sign acknowledging the defeat. Others of us, cry from our being, “whhyyy!” Depression and desperation taking a place in our minds and soul.

There are those who find ways to grant themselves a reprieve from the uncomfortableness of defined defeat. Thus, we inherit the culture of drugs, drink, and a variety of addictions and excesses.

Death becomes something we do before we throw the soil over the boxes that house our carcasses. Instead of the gateway, the resurrection of Christ has established.

The difficulty is another way we are stripped of all our references and dependency upon symbolism. It is so effective because we cling so tenaciously to our own definitions.

When we are not choosing to exit under our desire to remain in control, we are heaping erroneous conclusions upon one another. This is happening to you, we conclude. Because you did something or failed to do something you shouldn’t or should have done. (Ouch! I’m drawing my own feet up over that thought!)

We should let GOD be GOD. We should allow the circumstances of our individual living, remain GOD’s to utilize. Only GOD has the mandate of Love. If you think those types of conclusions are okay, you probably should have a webinar with the friends of the man named Job! Sincerity is not always a case of righteousness.

Endurance is the willingness to remain steadfast in our trust and dependency on GOD; despite natural and physical fluctuations. These fluctuations, i.e. troubles, are merely a part of an ongoing conversation.

Ideally, we should live with an awareness and continuous need for GOD. But affluence in this world tends to drop kick us into a massive mental zone of forgetfulness; of who we are, and who we are not!

Like Job, we can understand the conversation that all of living brings to us. Not just the conversation from physical affluence. Job discovered his vanity in challenging GOD.

He came away with this understanding! “Ye though you slay me, yet will I trust you. All of my appointed time, I will wait upon the Lord!”

All of living is a part of a conversation. A desire to draw us back into the warmth of the Creator who loves us despite what we are and are not. Endurance is the default of a trusting heart that remembers whose we are and who makes it all possible.

(Job chapter 1 through 42)